Margaret Wise Brown

Although “Goodnight Moon” is her best known work (it has sold forty-eight million copies since 1947), children’s author Margaret Wise Brown (1910 – 1952) wrote more than a hundred children’s books before dying suddenly at forty-two while recovering from surgery. Her special magic was using simple language to tell a story from a child’s point of view.

Celebrating 100 years of Margaret Wise Brown, this HarperCollins sites features some of her bestselling books with printable bedtime activities, coloring games, a printable counting activity, and an audio snippet from "The Runaway Bunny". There is also a short Brown bio and a longer one of illustrator Clement Hurd. "The son of a prosperous New York mortgage banker, Hurd attended St. Paul's and Yale, and seemed destined to join his father's firm when, in the spring of 1931, he announced his plan to become an artist and sailed for France."

Crafty homeschooling mom Jolanthe shares activities and printables for a Goodnight Moon week. "We learned the nursery rhyme Hey Diddle Diddle this week {one of the pictures in Goodnight Moon is of the cow jumping over the moon}. As he found words to the rhyme {on a separate sheet}, he used a Do-A-Dot Marker to blot them out." You find the printable worksheets at the bottom of the page, listed under Other Helpful Goodnight Moon Links.

Hubbard's Cupboard, a site for parents and teachers of preschoolers and kindergarten students, presents a five-day plan for teaching and enjoying "Goodnight Moon" with a group of youngsters. "Day One: Ask students to share with the class things that they do to get ready for bed (brush teeth, get a drink of water, put on pajamas, hug a family member, find their favorite stuffed animal, say goodnight, etc.)" The lesson plan includes a list of related poems, a few craft projects, and cross-curricular ideas such as studying nocturnal animals in science.

Amy Gary, a publishing industry veteran, has found over 300 unpublished works by Margaret Wise Brown since 1990, which she is editing and bringing to market. Her site is an excellent biographical source, as it contains both a short and long bio, a photo gallery, and links to additional online articles about Brown. "Margaret loved animals. Most of her books have animals as characters in the story. She liked to write books that had a rhythm to them, so many of her books rhyme or repeat a word pattern."

Stephanie is a mom of twins, and a speech-language pathologist. At Twodaloo she shares "activities and information about early childhood development that you can use at home, in the classroom, or in the therapy setting." This activity page is the first of three related to Goodnight Moon, and it uses the printables from Homeschool Creations (see link above.) The second and third units are linked in the closing paragraph.